Stand-up comic and TV cop Richard Belzer has died at the age of 78

Richard Belzer, the longtime stand-up comedian who became one of TV’s most indelible investigators as John Munch on Homicide: Life on the Street and Law & Order: SVU, has died at the age of 78.

Belzer died Sunday at his home in Bozouls, southern France, his longtime friend Bill Scheft told The Hollywood Reporter.

Comedian Laraine Newman first announced his death on Twitter.

Actor Henry Winkler, Belzer’s cousin, wrote “Rest In Peace Richard”.

For more than two decades and 10 series – including appearances on 30 Rock and Arrested Development – Belzer played the smart-ass homicide detective prone to conspiracy theories.

Belzer first played Munch in a 1993 episode of Homicide and most recently in 2016’s Law & Order: SVU.

Belzer never auditioned for the role.

After hearing him on The Howard Stern Show, executive producer Barry Levinson brought Belzer in to read for the role.

“I would never have become a detective. But if I were, I would be like this,” Belzer once said.

“They write all my paranoia and anti-establishment dissidences and conspiracy theories.

“So I really enjoyed it. A dream, really.”

From that unlikely beginning, Belzer’s Munch became one of TV’s longest-running characters and a sunglass-wearing presence on the small screen for more than two decades.

In 2008 Belzer published the novel I Am Not a Cop! with Michael Ian Black.

He also helped write several books on conspiracy theories, including those on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

“He made me laugh a billion times,” his longtime friend and colleague Richard Lewis said on Twitter.

Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Belzer was drawn to comedy, he said, during an abusive childhood in which his mother beat him and his older brother Len.

“My kitchen was the toughest room I’ve ever worked in,” Belzer told People magazine in 1993.

After being expelled from Dean Junior College in Massachusetts, Belzer began a stand-up life in New York in 1972.

At Catch a Rising Star, Belzer became a regular.

He made his screen debut in 1974 in Ken Shapiro’s film The Groove Tube, a television satire starring Chevy Chase, a film spawned by comedy group Channel One, of which Belzer was a member.

Before Saturday Night Live transformed the comedy scene in New York, Belzer appeared on the National Lampoon Radio Hour with John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray and others.

In 1975 he became the warm-up comic for the newly formed SNL.

While many cast members rose to fame quickly, Belzer’s roles were mostly minor cameos.

He later said SNL creator Lorne Michaels had broken his promise to put him on the show.